Reconceptualising Sovereignty in International Law

Flavio G. I. Inocencio, Nottingham Trent University

Abstract

This paper addresses the key issue of authority which is part of the concept of Sovereignty and how new institutional arrangements are decomposing authority beyond the state. In order to explore the problem of "deterritorialization" of authority, I ask two questions: How these processes affect the understanding of Sovereignty as State attribute ? What is the role of other normative orders in redefining Sovereignty? Much has been written about the concept of Sovereignty as a statehood attribute, however only recently enough attention has been paid to the role of regional and functional legal systems in the understanding of concept of Sovereignty. This paper argues that a theory about Sovereignty needs to address the issue of competing and overlapping claims to authority in certain issue areas of the international order by these different normative orders.